ConurE.— On Volcanoes and Geysers of New Zealand, 419 
to the wayfarer of to-day amongst these interesting scenes :—‘* Whence the 
activity which still pours forth the boiling waters of Rotomahana to run 
glistening down the silica terraces of their own constant formation— 
wherein the force that lights the red fires which burn ever in the crater of 
White Island—or what the motive power that still throws up a cone in the 
crater of Tongariro (Ngauruhoe) ?" The reply from the waters of Rotoma- 
hana, from the fires of White Island, and from the cone of Tongariro was 
the same—the one word, ‘ Sulphur." Whether the almost universally 
imagined heat of the interior of the earth has any existence in fact does 
not materially affect the subject; for it was enough to the observer that 
sulphur in its natural state lay beneath the crust of the earth in beds 
of greater or less extent, being self-combustible when heated and moist, 
smouldering for long years—burning near the surface sufficient to melt the 
rocks and throw them out as lava and pumice amidst fire and smoke, and 
with reports like cannon—or heating the internal waters which came into 
contact with it, and forcing them up as minerally impregnated geysers, or 
as sulphurous steam. It was easy to follow out the idea and conceive how 
these inflammably begot forces, confined in the interior and unable to 
escape, have raised the land into mountain-masses; or,as the material con- 
sumed, have caused the crust of the earth, sometimes gradually, at other 
times violently, to sink into the empty caverns. Hence earthquakes but 
wait upon the sulphur fires below, and attest their wide-spread power. 
Whether at boiling cauldron or bursting crater the only inflammable or 
explosive substance to be seen is Sulphur, and the only effect observable is 
that from its fire. Steaming basins, smoking craters, and destroying earth- 
- quakes, it may be safely assumed, never occur without the presence of 
Sulphur as the good or evil genius of the phenomena. 
Rotomahana.—During the writer's stay at the Terraces he was favoured 
with an exhibition of the subsidence of the waters of Te Tarata into the 
caverns below; and as the Terraces on that occasion got dry, it was note- 
worthy how brittle the silicious surface became, showing upon what a 
slender thread the beauties of that mountain side hang; for, were the flow 
of the blue waters to stop, as stop it must when the energies of the forces 
below exhaust themselves, the glory as well as the cause of Rotomahana 
will disappear. 
Tongariro (Ngauruhoe).—When the writer visited the crater of Tonga- 
riro in May of last year, there was a cone on the north-west side of it. 
This cone was about 120 feet wide at the top, and was closed at the bottom 
as if the volcano had not been in action for a considerable time. Upon the 
writer’s climbing the mountain (a feat always attended with difficulty and 
risk) and descending into the crater, in December following, he found that 
